Varshini Prakash: Last News

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaIn 2019, Rachel Lears electrified Sundance with “Knock Down the House,” a fly-on-the-wall look at a group of progressive candidates hoping to ride grassroots campaigns to Washington. That film, which played like cri de coeur while the Trump administration was at the height of its power, also benefitted from capturing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while she was still a bartender turned upstart congressional hopeful, a bit of kismet that resulted in a $10 million sale to Netflix.Three years later, Lears returns to Sundance in a different key with “To the End.” It’s a more somber look at a group of activists who are trying to do everything possible to pressure the U.S.

Roadside Attractions has taken domestic rights for To The End, the follow-up film from Rachel Lears (Knock Down The House), and set a Dec. 9 theatrical-only release date.

Dennis Harvey Film CriticUnstoppable force meets immovable object in “To the End.” Rachel Lears’ documentary inspires in its portrait of youthful activists organizing to push impactful climate-change policies into American political reality — and exasperates in the resistance with which that urgent quest is greeted on both sides of the entrenched-power aisle. Covering several years of fast-moving events, this Sundance premiere is too exclusively U.S.-focused to be particularly viable for offshore programmers, but its topicality should stir sales interest on home turf.Like the director’s last feature “Knock Down the House,” about the 2018 Congressional election, this one also throws a spotlight on New York state candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.